Villa Aurora Events Archive
December 2016
Manfred Flügge
Berlin
Information
Escape from France
The Americans who saved Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger
Following an adventurous escape from German-occupied France, the Jewish-German writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta, were able to escape to the US in the autumn of 1940. This was only made possible through the efforts of their American rescuers Varian Fry, Hiram Bingham, as well as Martha and Waitstill Sharp. They broke rules and risked their positions and their lives. During the 1930s and 40s in France, their heroic actions saved countless lives.
In a bilingual publication written for Villa Aurora, which was the Feuchtwanger’s exile home and later reopened as an artist recidence, Manfred Flügge, author and former Villa Fellow, traces the story of Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger’s escape. On Tuesday, December 6th at 8 p.m., Manfred Flügge will present his book along with photographs and filmsequences in the Literaturhaus, Fasanenstraße in Berlin.
Participant
Manfred Flügge was born in 1946. He grew up in the Ruhr Valley and studied Romance languages and history in Muenster and in Lille. He tought at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1976 until 1988. Manfred Flügge works and lives in Berlin.
Oswald Egger: Harlequin Coats and Other Stories
Berlin
Information
Harlequin Coats and Other Matters
with Oswald Egger and Günter M. Ziegler
On the evening of December 9, Villa Aurora, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the publishing house Matthes & Seitz Berlin hosted the book launch for Oswald Egger’s book *Harlequin Coats and Other Matters*. In an entertaining tour de force, Eggers and the moderator, mathematician Prof. Günter M. Ziegler, explored Leibniz’s world of ideas.
In his poetological study, Egger attempts to piece together some aspects of the more obscure ideas and implicitly conceived lines of connection and relationship in Leibniz’s work. His unorthodox interpretation of the rules and results of physics, metaphysics, and mathematics forms a network of interconnections based on internal relationships—often without any obvious link. Vivid models and thought experiments constantly shed light on “how one thing leads to another.” Using both words and non-verbal forms, Oswald Egger draws on several motifs in Leibniz’s work to illustrate connections that “often surprise even him.” In this “poetic endeavor,” the obscure and the convoluted intersect in a compelling manner within a web of evidence.
“Harlequin’s Cloaks and Other Matters” is published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin.
Participants
Prof. Oswald Egger, born in 1963 in Lana, South Tyrol, studied literature and philosophy and now lives in Vienna. He was the editor of the journals Der Prokurist and per procura and organized the Lana Cultural Days. Many of his poems have been translated, including into American English, French, and Dutch. In 2007, he received the Peter Huchel Prize; in 2008, the H.C. Artmann Prize; and in 2010, the Oskar Pastior Prize. In 2001, he received a fellowship at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles; in 2014, he received the Outstanding Artist Award for Literature and a fellowship from Villa Massimo in Rome. Since 2011, he has held the newly established chair in “Language and Form” at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel.
Prof. Günter M. Ziegler, also born in 1963, is a native of Munich and a mathematician. He has been conducting research and teaching at the Free University of Berlin since March 2011. His work focuses, among other things, on the theory of polyhedra. For this, he was awarded the DFG’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2001. He received his first (and only) literary award in 1993 for Fragments of a Legend. Together with Martin Aigner, he wrote The BOOK of Proofs, which has since been published in fourteen different languages. In 2009, “Darf ich Zahlen? Geschichten aus der Mathematik” was published by Piper (Munich) in 2009, and “Mathematik – Das ist doch keine Kunst!” (Knaus, Munich) in 2013. He is a member of the Executive Board and spokesperson for the 2015–16 annual theme “Leibniz: Vision as a Task” of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Partner
An event presented by Villa Aurora in cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and Matthes & Seitz Berlin as part of the annual theme
Performance Lab #3
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Feuchtwanger Refreshed #3
USC's MFA students and professors in Dramatic Writing are once more bringing new life to the work of Lion Feuchtwanger, this time writing 1-5 minute scenes inspired by Feuchtwanger's famous 1933 letter to the Nazi occupant of his confiscated Berlin home. Four actors will perform the plays in the same living space where Feuchtwanger once held readings of his own work.
All are welcome.
Michael Fehr
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Michael Fehr (*1982, Bern, Switzerland) is a stage maverick. In his performances, he transforms words into sound and stories into music, until the point of redemption. Each of his performances is a unique experience that cannot be recreated. The Bern based lyricist, writer and musician was recently awarded the renowned Kelag prize at the Ingeborg-Bachman-Competition. In 2015, he won the Bayern2-Wortspiele-Preis, which awarded him a one-month fellowship at Villa Aurora. His live cantations of sound and poetry will be accompanied by guitarist Manuel Troller (excerpt from: Theater am Neumarkt, Zürich).
Manuel Troller (*1986, Lucerne, Switzerland), guitarist and composer, is actively working in diverse musical genres. Since 2006, he plays and composes with the internationally active Band Schnellertollermeier – who plays music without compromises, ranging from free improvisation, Hardcore-Jazz, modern composition to brute rock music – but feels just as home in Pop.